WebRacer dedicated web surfing "phone accessory"
By Barb Dybwad 
posted Mar 15th 2005 12:32AM
posted Mar 15th 2005 12:32AM
One usually thinks of the accessories to a device as being smaller complements to the main show, but the Planon WebRacer dedicated web surfing device is intended as the big sibling for your cellphone. It's billed as a "mini laptop" that basically adds a larger screen and QWERTY keyboard to your phone du jour. It hooks into your mobile via Bluetooth to glom onto its GPRS connection and get online action for the VGA 640 x 480 pixel color display. It's supposed to be a happy compromise between laptop and smartphone, but it seems more like a $270 kludge. Any convenience this device might provide is likely going to be outweighed by the inconvenience of having to carry it around along with your phone.
Why bother when there's the Nokia 9500/9300 that does all that and more?
Is it still a scam?? I remember when this came out under some other name about a year ago. I ordered it off the seemingly shady website that was supposedly selling it (I know, I should have known better).
Of course, over a month later and it still hadn't arrived. After about the 4th email, I finally got some BS response (something to the effect how they were waiting for more units from the factory to complete my order). Needless to say I canceled it and felt like I dodged a bullet that nothing fraudulent showed up on my card.
For what it's worth, I think it's a decent idea. The earlier iteration utilized a proxy and $10/month service to speed up the connection. I wonder if that's still the case.
You forgot to publish a link to the actual product, so here it is: http://www.planon.com/products.php#web
Cheers!
Solid assessment: an idea whose time will never come. Still, give them credit for trying: data entry on mobile handsets is hell on earth. Anything that makes it easier will blow the segment wide open.
I'm thinking a headset with built-in voice recognition and a hovering screen. The handsets are certainly gaining enough horsepower to run one...imagine the possibilities of such a converged device.
Enough dreaming. Back to work.
Carmi
http://writteninc.blogspot.com
Something like this might get niche acceptance if it has a decent (e.g. thin) form factor. Carry your RAZR or similar tiny phone in your pocket at all times, and throw one of these in your gadget bag for when you need better web access.
But, before I would consider one, it would have to (1) work in a non-proxy mode and (2) run a decent mobile browser (e.g. Opera, Pocket IE) rather than who-knows-what. Come to think of it, mail and IM clients would be mighty nice too.
In short, now that bluetooth exists, reviving the HPC form factor might make sense.
640x480? On that display? With that aspect ratio? That's the sort of screen design that would make Callista Flockhart look fat.
Looks like an updated version of the PocketSurfer, which I believe is the device treo007 referred to.
I played with the PocketSurfer at last year's CTIA show and was quite impressed with the technology. Basically, it included a full version of Internet Explorer. The PocketSurfer could do almost anything the desktop version of IE can do, including rich HTML, frames, XML, Java applets, and pop-up windows. It could even handle sites using a Macromedia's Flash interface.
However, it couldn't run any other applications, not even email software. Still, it was quite capable of handling any of the web-based email systems. While I watched, a demonstrator used a PocketSurfer to go to Hotmail and check his messages.
Oh yeah, it used a proxy service that, among other things, reduced the file size of images on web pages. This speeded up web access, but cost $10 a month.
The original version had just a 640-by-240-pixel screen, so the new version doubles that.
As impressive as the device was, it sounds like it wasn't backed up by good companies. Maybe the new version will be.
"Any convenience this device might provide is likely going to be outweighed..."
...um, how bout by the fact that you're stuck on a GPRS network?
I guess I shouldn't talk since I've yet to actually use my fancy Bluetooth phone as a cellular modem yet (haven't really had a reason) but if it's anything like trying to surf on the phone itself, I'm guessing it's pretty bleak. I can just imagine a full VGA screen in front of me making the page loads seem even slower.
#8, on most phones the processing power of the phone is the bottleneck, not the connection with the network. Most phones just have a very slow browser. Used from a computer, latency is the biggest obstacle, with speeds being limited but acceptable for most browsing.
Based on the datasheet from the planon.com website: http://www.planon.com/pdf/planon-webracer-brochure.pdf It is only 640 x 240 resolution. I looks like it's still based on the old Pocket Surfer device from http://www.datawind.com
I have a Pocket Sufer unit and love it. I was traveling from San Francisco to Los Angeles this past weekend (coming back from GDC). I was surfing the web for 5 hours non-stop coming down the 5 freeway using my Pocket Surfer. I thought that was just too cool!
I saw the webRacer being demonstrated, and it truly capture the real web experience, the download times were blazingly fast. The screen size 640 x 240 is much better than the other products mentioned like the Nokia ones, because it allows for full screen viewing, I hate how other devices are so small screen and requires me to scroll so much.